Page 95 of Prodigal

Samir was a straight-up killer.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Ennis told him as they sat. “I know the last time we saw each other?—”

“The last time we saw each other, you confessed to being responsible for killing the mother of the man I love.” Just speaking those words… It was one of thosepinch memoments. If anyone had told him this would be his reality now, he’d have laughed in their face. But this was his world now, and it was partly because of the man sitting across from him.

“I had to save you,” Ennis rushed to explain. “You and your mother. I wanted?—”

André held up a hand. He didn’t come to listen to Ennis regurgitate all the excuses he’d spewed on the yacht that night. “When I was ten or eleven years old, I was bullied really badly in school. Calder McGilvery and his group of friends made my life hell. No matter how much my mom complained, nothing happened. Calder’s family was friends with the principal and some local politicians, so basically untouchable. I endured it, took most of their beatings and taunting on the chin.” He shrugged. “I was a skinny kid with zero friends, there wasn’t much else I could do. They would call me poor, the N-word, throw food at me, and pull my pants down in the middle of the gym.”

“André.”

“One evening after school, they cornered me while I was walking home and beat me so badly, I cracked a back tooth and fractured my left arm. Routine shit. Except one of them said something else while I was curled up on the ground, trying to escape their kicks. He said I was a piece of shit and a weak loser and that’s why I didn’t have a father. Because my father must have known I was worthless and wanted nothing to do with me.”

Ennis inhaled sharply.

“Out of all the things they’d done and said to me, that one gutted me. Hurt me to my core, because that was a wound I’d been dragging around for ages, my father not being there. I questioned why he didn’t want me, and those boys, their words seemed to provide the answer.”

“But that’s not true.” Ennis leaned forward and grabbed his arm. “André, that is not the truth.”

“I went home to Mom and I cried in her lap while she cleaned the blood off my face. I asked her why my father didn’t want me. I asked her if she could find him and get him to come protect me from Calder and his friends. I told her to tell my father that I would get straight A’s, I would keep my room clean, and Iwouldn’t grumble when she asked me to do the dishes. I would be—” His voice cracked. “I would be the best son ever if he came for me.” He could still hear the desperate wobble in his voice as he begged his mother to find his father. As he bargained. He’d felt that absence so acutely in his soul that day. And he’d wanted to prove those bullies wrong. That he had a father who did indeed love him, who would protect him, who would tear the world apart for him.

“My mother…” He swallowed. “She stroked my head, her voice low as if it hurt her to speak, and she told me that sometimes, no matter how good we were, no matter how deserving, we never get what we want.We can do all the right things, André, and still be treated wrongly. Still be disappointed. Still get our hearts broken. We have to live with that,she said.We have to find a way to live with it.That was all she said, but I heard what she didn’t say. That my father would not be coming for me. That he would not be protecting me, that I would forever be walking around feeling unwanted and unloved by the man who’d fathered me.”

“I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, son.” Silent tears trekked down Ennis’s face.

When André stared at him, he thought he saw pieces of himself there, in Ennis’s eyes. In the shape of his nose, the curve of his jaw. He saw himself. As much as he wished he could say otherwise, Ennis was his father. André was his son. He could spend the rest of his life denying it, hating it, or he could use it to his advantage.

“The first time I got on a plane was to see you.” He hadn’t planned on mentioning this, but he might as well. “I traveled to DC. I thought I would come see you.” He had to chuckle at his naivety. “A man stopped me and told me to go back home. That you didn’t want to see me.”

Ennis averted his gaze.

“How did you know I was coming to see you?”

Ennis’s Adam’s apple bobbed and he cleared his throat before turning back to André. “I always had eyes on you and your mother. Prislaya and whoever else she was working with had already threatened your life. I knew if you were to come to me, they would find out, and I didn’t know what would happen, what they would do to you. I had to protect you.” His tone and eyes pleaded with André to hear him, to believe him. “I had to keep you away.”

Did André believe him? Could he? “And the money?” He didn’t bother elaborating.

“You’re still my son,” Ennis said. “I refused to leave you destitute.” Sadness clouded his eyes when he said, “In the end, that was the only thing your mother would accept from me.”

“Was it your idea to nominate Heath Lyndhurst as Aldo Winters’s proxy?” That was still something Gideon didn’t have an explanation for, and André would do anything to get his man answers.

His father sighed. “Lyndhurst was Prislaya’s pick. She chose him but had me be the one to sponsor him so as not to be directly connected to him.” He lifted a shoulder in defeat. “She said she would explain it all later, but Gideon killed her before she could.”

Pity. It seemed Prislaya had a lot to answer for.

Leaning back, André took a deep breath. “Gideon loves me, and it is that love that allows you to keep breathing. If I tell him to, you would be dead before the clock hand touches the next minute.” There was confidence in his voice, confidence he couldn’t hide. Wouldn’t. He spoke the truth and Ennis knew it. “We have plans for The Council. You will continue to hold your seat, but all your votes, all of your support, belong to Gideon. All of your resources too. You will use said resources to figure out who ordered you to go after Gideon all those years ago and who was involved in the second attempt on his life. Everything you dowill be monitored by Gideon and his people.” He flicked a glance in Samir’s direction and Ennis stiffened. “Is that clear?”

“The reason I agreed to do what Prislaya wanted was to protect you and your mother. I aligned with her to ensure your safety, André,” Ennis whispered. “All I ever wanted was to protect you.” Hurt and pain bled from his eyes, pouring down his face, but André wasn’t moved by any of it.

“No. All you ever wanted was to protect yourself. To hold on to your wealth, your position, your life.” André shrugged. “I get it.” Now, he did. “Stand on it.” He got to his feet and gazed down at Ennis. He looked different than when André had first arrived—he now appeared withered and broken. “When I have children of my own, there will never be a moment when they have to question their worth or my love, never a moment when they won’t feel my protection or my presence. That’s what you do as a parent, you show up. No matter what it takes. You show up.”

“André, please.” Ennis grabbed his wrist. “I’m so sorry, son. I fucked up, but I love you.”

“You did fuck up.” André nodded. “Now comes the consequences.” He pulled away, striding over to Samir. The door opened and the armed men reentered, their guns trained on Ennis.

“André.”

He ignored Ennis as he addressed Samir. “Um… Can I be the one to tell Gideon?—”

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